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[yatesDELTA]

Hi all

My daughters computer keeps cutting out, on a seemingly random basis, did it every half an hour last night. Has been doing this for about a month. It has been virus scanend today and AVG wont let it delete the virus. Something baout an advanced user...

Earlier my son took the panel of the side and hoovered up much of the dust (he held the hoover quite far away from the motherboard though) thinking that it may be cloggin up the fans, put it back together and yet again it cut out..

Running out of ideas here?

Also we went out today for about two hours. The computer was left on and was still on upon our returnal

Strangely each time it is rebooted it says nothing about scanning disks as you would expect from a machine that has had power cut to it

Cant be the PSU since the LED light for the ethernet card stays on.

[mick-1975]

have u tried reboot it from hard drive . it should delete evey think on your computer as it was when you first brought it ..
  lap top or desk top ??

[yatesDELTA]

Desktop

My mate built it for me 2 years ago. 3GHz dual core P$
500MB RAM
200GB HDD

He partitioned the HDD and on the other one is a ghost, used it once but cant remember how.

How do i boot from HDD though? is this in command prompt? i dont really want to have to format if i can help it. She'll murder me cos of all the crap on there

My son nomrally does virus scans and stuff but he bought himself a laptop and aint done it in months.

[Bandit127]

To try to get rid of the virus, try booting in safe mode and re-running the AVG scan.

Make sure AVG is fully up to date before you do this.

I don't think it's PSU related. Reboots like this are often software related, commonly drivers.

Also, running System Restore from a point before you started having trouble may help. But get rid of the virus first if you can.

Reloading Widows may be required but I would view it as a last measure.

[mick-1975]

if i remember right , if u switch your computer on, let it load up . if u have the orignal disk that came with the computer  put it in .
  switch the computer off then restart it , it should come up with a page staying re boot from disk ,,

  or switch the computer on and keep pressing f8, or space bar all the time should come up with a page staying reboot and follow instructions .
  if this dont work let me know as i have to do mine as my lad wants it in his bedroom .

[gwa]

Right click the AVG icon and select Run As .... Then select Following User. Make sure it says Administrator, enter the correct password and trhe program will run will all permissions. hopefully it will allow you remove the virus. Good Luck  

[hp7166]

Failing Everything restart the computer and just before Windows Starts hit F8 and go into safe mode. Fire AVG up there and run a deep scan on all the hard drives. This should allow you to remove any virus's that are in the memory!

Is it Vista??
Are you the only account on the PC?

[Gaffers]

Cutting out like that is one of two possibilities:

1. Driver conflict - Windows automatically cuts out and lets you know when you next boot up

2. Faulty PSU, if you have a spare one swap it out if not there are some PSU voltage monitors for certain motherboards.  Worth looking into before you go down the road of reinstalling

[MickAP]

We had a PC doing the same thing, we replaced the display card and that cured it.....Try downloading new drivers for the display 1st.

Mick

[yatesDELTA]

its an integrated graphics card

It has been working as normal for the past few hours...

[Bandit127]

its an integrated graphics card

It has been working as normal for the past few hours...

Perhaps it is as simple as a loose connection?

There is an advanced engineeriong technique reserved for use in such situations.. it's called "Wiggle the Wires". You will find it in the same book as "Whack the B*stard".

It fixed my LCDTV which (unhelpfully) has a vertical power plug on it.  

[willyboy]

its an integrated graphics card

It has been working as normal for the past few hours...

Try borrowing a graphics card from some one  if you can & try that  see if it still does it...
Also you mention you have it ghosted yes ? well if you wish to run that depending on what vers of Norton ghost it is  you can probably just run it from your programs it says several uses ...one is recover my computer & when clicked will show you if the ghosting is still there ..however if you do run it you will lose all info  from the point you /date you ghosted it to the present !

[Pete Elite]

  Hi,
     Have you added any hardware lately, either internal or via a USB socket which may be overloading the PSU?

[TheBoy]

What kind of 'cutting out'?  Lockup? BSOD? Reboot?

Overheating is a possibility - check CPU and Northbridge coolers are fully seated.  VGA cooler if mid/high end vga card.

PSU.  Easiest test is replacement.

Remember to wear anti static straps at all times with side off!

[Mr Skrunts]

What kind of 'cutting out'?  Lockup? BSOD? Reboot?

Overheating is a possibility - check CPU and Northbridge coolers are fully seated.  VGA cooler if mid/high end vga card.

PSU.  Easiest test is replacement.

Remember to wear anti static straps at all times with side off!

TheBoy beat me to it.

Just had a similar problem.  Machine was fine but kept locking.  Then on occasions it just rebooted.

My problem was self inflicked, all the fins in the fan had clogged up about 2/3 months ago, being lazy I took the H/S/F and removed the fan and cleaned, then with a dry 1" paint brush I cleaned the heatsink fins.

Dab of heatsink paste and carefully refitted the H/S/F using the plastic push/twist pins and being very very carefull not to put pressure on the Motherboard.

Original temp with New build was 28 Deg unloaded and 34 Deg after gaming.

Seems one of the clips had come undones and temp rose to 55/60 with the settings to cut out at 65 Deg.

Major issue Saturday Night computer hung 3 times on the trot but didnt reboot, setting didnt kick in and CPU running at ** Deg   :-/

Stripped and New fan fitted, cleaned off old Heat paste, all checked, running under load, Gaming etc  34 Deg and all is well

Double check the fins on your CPU cooler, if they are clogged then hoovering out the case will not sort out the problem.